Wednesday, February 01, 2006

State of the Union Address

Memorable moments, for me:

  • As President Bush noted the passing of Coretta Scott King, the camera immediately zoomed in on the faces of African-American’s seated in the Capitol.
  • There is no peace in retreat.” The definition of peace is the state prevailing during the absence of war. How does one obtain peace in the presence of war if it is defined by its absence?
  • “We are in this fight to win, and we are winning.” Personally, I’m going to have to quote Dalton (Patrick Swayze) from the movie Road House here and say, “No one wins a fight.”
  • President Bush noted the death of Marine Staff Sergeant Dan Clay in Falluja last month and introduced his family; wife Lisa and parents Sara Jo and Bud. This sad, reflective moment was twisted a bit for me when the family stood, the house applauded and the camera panned to our President smiling and winking in another direction. This man has no scruples.

After reading Bombadee’s post yesterday, I kept count of some words used in the speech. Here is what I had at the end:

Terror/Terrorism/Terrorists: 17
Freedom: 15
WMD/Nuclear Weapons: 4
9/11: 2

Alas, he did not use either resolve or steadfast. No shots for me.

7 comments:

Jenny said...

Hey, I can up with the same counts! I also picked up on

Isolationsits 4
Democracy 11
Liberty 5
Compassion 7
Peace 5
sacrifices 4

Anonymous said...

Did either of you count how many times he said Amerca?

BoomBoom said...

America/American: 71

Jenny said...

I lost count

BoomBoom said...

I just performed a "find" on the transcript. Cheating?

Jenny said...

not cheating, resourceful.

Anonymous said...

I, too, noticed the camera choices when Bush noted Mrs. King's passing. I'm very surprised I didn't see Ms. Rice, however. I guess she's "too good" to be considered a "token."

I'm not sure if Bush was smiling and winking in another direction or at the family. It took a few minutes for me to notice that the camera, when on Bush, was in opposite of what it should have been. I'm not POSSITIVE why they chose to do this but I speculate that it has something to do with the noticeable preference in his gaze direction toward the republican side and they didn't want that "noticed" at home. - At first I thought "How odd.. Bush usually addresses most of his speeches favoring the republican side with his glances, today he's noticeably favoring the democrats." Until a mis-timed camera switch showed the same gaze from close up and then further away showed his head the opposite direction. Then again I'm somewhat of a "conspiracy theorist" having worked directly with the legislative process for 3 years lol.

I'm not sure if I counted correctly since I didn't read the entire transcript and could only stomach so much of Bush's B.S. - er - speech but I counted 20 uses of the word "terror" or any derivative of it and 17 uses of "freedom" or "freedom's."

Either way, I think his speech writers clearly have a better understanding that the American public has grown weary of hearing 9/11, terrorism, etc. as an excuse for him to continually find ways to make his buddies rich. Unfortunately I'm an eternal optomist when it comes to the American public and have repeatedly been stunned at the level of support this man STILL seems to be able to get.